Law Commons^™

"Relative Checks": Towards Optimal Control Of Administrative Power, David S. Rubenstein

William & Mary Law Review

Administrative agencies wield a necessary but dangerous power. Some control of that power is constitutionally required and normatively justified. Yet widely discordant views persist concerning the appropriate means of control. Scholars have proposed competing administrative control models that variably place the judiciary, the President, and Congress at the helm. Although these models offer critical insights into the institutional competencies of the respective branches, they tend to understate the limitations of those branches to check administrative power and ultimately marginalize the public interest costs occasioned by second-guessing administrative choice. The “relative checks” paradigm introduced here seeks to improve upon existing models …

Fiduciary Administration: Rethinking Popular Representation In Agency Rulemaking, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

Do administrative agencies undermine popular sovereignty when they make federal law? Over the last several decades, some scholars have argued that rulemaking by unelected agency officials imperils popular sovereignty and that federal law should resolve the apparent tension between regulatory practice and democratic principle by allowing the President to serve as a proxy for the "will of the people" in the administrative state. According to this view, placing federal rulemaking power firmly within the President's managerial control would advance popular preferences throughout the federal system.

This conventional wisdom is misguided. As political scientists have long recognized, the electorate's relative disengagement …

Fiduciary Foundations Of Administrative Law, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

An enduring challenge for administrative law is the tension between the ideal of democratic policymaking and the ubiquity of bureaucratic discretion. This Article seeks to reframe the problem of agency discretion by outlining an interpretivist model of administrative law based on the concept of fiduciary obligation in private legal relations such as agency, trust, and corporation. Administrative law, like private fiduciary law, increasingly relies upon a tripartite framework of entrustment, residual control, and fiduciary duty to demarcate a domain of bounded agency discretion. To minimize the risk that agencies will abuse their entrusted discretion through opportunism or carelessness, administrative law …

Judicial Review Of Administrative Discretion, Charles H. Koch Jr.

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Status Of Independent Agencies After Bowsher V. Synar, Paul R. Verkuil

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.